Counting the Omer on San Francisco’s streets

The 49-day countdown from Passover to Shavuot is well underway (10 days today — that’s one week plus three days), and some Jews in San Francisco have found a novel way to keep track — by counting the city’s 49 consecutively numbered avenues. J Weekly has the story:

It turns out that the city is perfectly designed for the Jewish commandment to count the 49 days between the second day of Passover and Shavuot. That’s because it just so happens that San Francisco has 49 consecutively numbered avenues (including, for purposes of the project, Arguello and Great Highway) in its Richmond and Sunset districts.

When Yeashore Community’s maggid Jeff Haas and his friend, educator Reuben Politi, noticed this coincidence a couple of months ago, they saw an opportunity to design a project that would literally bring Jews onto the streets to observe the mitzvah of counting the Omer together.

The two men organized the Omer Project, an initiative that is equally about counting the days between the two holidays and getting out the message to Jews, across all denominations and beyond, that their presence counts.